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He took a half-step towards the desk and made himself stop. His hand had curled at his side; he opened it, finger by finger. Now was neither the time nor the place. He permitted himself a low word to Braithwaite, and a single cold look at Miss Trent that he regretted the instant he had given it. He took his leave, before his temper could do it for him.

Glenbrae. That was to be his portion. A cold stone house in Scotland with another man’s smoke already rising from its chimney. He had visited it once as a boy and had been glad to leave. He bore the place no ill will. It was simply not the inheritance he had spent the better part of his life preparing to receive.

His brother was waiting at White’s. Brookmire took one look at his face and called for brandy before Julian had so much as found a chair.

“Well?” he demanded. “Is it settled? Is the house yours?”

“The house,” Julian said, lowering himself into the chair and tipping his head back, “belongs to Miss Viola Trent. Hers, and twenty thousand pounds besides.”

Brookmire set his glass down with a crack. “An unmarried girl. Inheriting Stoneleigh House.” His lip curled. “What in heaven could our cousin have been thinking?”

“I cannot understand it.” Julian closed his eyes. “The astonishment has sunk into my very bones, brother. I am cold all through.”

They could have been taken for twins, the two of them: the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, the same stocky build. But Brookmire’s eyes were blazing now, while Julian only felt hollowed out.

“That house was to be yours.” Brookmire leaned in, fierce. “The whole family knew it. We spoke of it openly, of how you would keep it in the high standing it had always held. What will they say now?”

The question hung between them. Julian had no answer for it.

Lady Warrington had been his mother’s cousin, not his own, but the bond had run close all the same. As a boy he had spent long summers at the Warrington estate; he had seen with his own eyes the fondness between the lady and his mother. A favorite, he had thought himself. And with that fondness had come the slow, settled certainty that Stoneleigh would one day be his. Lady Warrington had taken pains to make it so, walking him through the house only last Season, directing his eye to the roof repairs wanting in the west wing, to the library that begged for careful cataloguing. There is a responsibility coming to you from her, his mother had murmured afterward. He had understood. He had prepared. He had let himself feel a quiet pride in the prospect of it, for it was the finest house in London, named with something near reverence by the ton.

One memory pressed in now, unbidden. He had been perhaps ten, a summer guest at Stoneleigh, caught halfway up the library ladder reaching for a book he had been told twice was beyond him, and Lady Warrington had come in and stood below him with her hands folded, watching, making no move at all to call him down. And what would you do with this house, Master Julian, she had asked him, if it were yours? He had answered with a boy’s whole confidence: he would keep it exactly as it was, every room, every book, and never let a thing be changed. She had looked at him a long moment in that way she had, as though reading a ledger only she could see. Hm, she had said. Only that. And then she had taken down the forbidden book and given it to him, and told him a house was not a monument, and gone away again.

He had thought of it, over the years, as the day she marked him for Stoneleigh.

It occurred to him now, in the cold of White’s with a brandy going warm in his hand, that he might have had it backwards.

“Mayhap she was influenced.” Brookmire took two glasses from the footman’s tray and pressed one into Julian’s hand. “Mayhap Miss Trent had a hand in changing our cousin’s mind.”

“We know nothing of Miss Trent, nor of her family.” Julian shook his head. “We cannot let ourselves think such a thing.”

“Knowing nothing of her does not clear her of having worked upon our cousin.”

Julian swirled the brandy and let the thought press where he did not want it. For Lady Warrington to change her will, her mind, her long-held intention — it was strange indeed. Was it possible she had been pushed to it?

“It invites speculation,” Brookmire said.

“It does. And I can do nothing about that.” Julian’s voice came heavy. “Society must always be fed, and a will such as this is rare meat. Whatever the truth, they will twist it to suit their own mouths.”

His brother said nothing, only watched him, the question plain in his face.

“What would you have me do?” Julian set his glass down hard. “The will is read. The bequests are made. It is finished.”

But Brookmire took his time, and when he spoke his voice was steady in a way Julian envied. “You should discover why she gave the house to Miss Trent. You were always meant to have it — you, and not some unmarried stranger with a family and an inheritance of her own.” He shrugged. “Glenbrae is half a ruin with a tenant already in it. You will have no peace until you understand what our cousin did, and why. Nor, I confess, shall I.”

Julian rubbed a hand across his chin and tried not to feel the sting of it.

He let out a long breath. His brother was right. Neither of them could simply accept that a woman as deliberate as Lady Warrington had done this without reason. And under the cold weight of his shock, something else had begun to stir — a faint, hard thread of purpose.

“Very well,” he said. “I will do as you suggest. I must speak with Miss Trent.”

Relief washed over Brookmire’s face. “It might be,” he ventured, “that she could be brought to consider giving the house to you.”

“I doubt I should get far with that.” Julian grimaced. “My first task is only to speak with her, to learn what she knows of Lady Warrington, and whether she knows anything at all.”

He drained the last of his brandy and rose. He told his brother he had much to consider, and it was no lie.

Outside, he turned his collar up against a wind that had no business being cool in summer, and he let himself imagine the long halls of Stoneleigh, the portraits, the ordered rooms he had thought one day to call his own. The house had always been meant for him. He believed that still.